Check out our new
online calendar

The new version of our Web site, carrollspaper.com, contains many features designed to increase interaction with readers and make it possible for you to get more information and news to us.

One of the most promising parts of the new Web site is an online community calendar that we would encourage you to use to promote events of interest to our readers, like fund-raising pancake breakfasts, ball games, community celebrations, visiting speakers and, of course, many government meetings.

We intend to create a clearinghouse of information on what’s going on, and the when and where of those activities.

We’ll pull many of the items and run them in the regular paper as well.

This feature is easy to use and allows you to post many details on the event, not just the time and place.

Here’s what you do:

Log on to carrollspaper.com and find the “submit” category on the right-hand side near the top of the home page. Click that and then, when it moves to a new page, click on “event calendar” and submit your information.

We will obviously screen the material to make sure it is appropriate for a family newspaper.

While you are online check out some of the other features that allow you to participate in polls, contribute photos and other items of interest to the Daily Times Herald.

We’ll provide more updates as we progress with what we think we will be an exciting new online presence in which the Web site functions as a companion to the paper.

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This is why you make movies …One of the more intriguing hypothetical questions I’ve heard is this: If you could go back in history and change anything, what would it be?

A popular answer: kill Hitler.

Which is precisely what filmmaker Quentin Tarantino does in his recent movie “Inglourious Basterds” (his spelling, not mine).

They accomplish in fiction what German Gen. Erwin Rommel and others couldn’t in life: the assassination of Hitler before D-Day.

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You think we have it bad?Parts of Hawaii are suffering through a high-surf warning today.

The largest newspaper in that state, The Honolulu Advertiser, warns beachgoers to watch out for higher waves.

Must be awful.

Surf along north-facing shores of Oahu, Molokai and Maui will range from 25 to 35 feet, the Advertiser reports.

I’m not a surfer, and I spent my morning navigating the new snows here, but that sounds pretty rough for the Hawaiians.

Of course, the newspaper adds, as if it knew an Iowan would be reading this morning:

“Meanwhile, it should be a sunny day (in Hawaii), with highs in the low 80s, as trade winds are expected to return.”

As a kid when I delivered my Daily Times Herald paper route during weather like today’s on West Street, 18th Street, 21st Street and Quint Avenue, I used to imagine that one day I would be living in Hawaii like “Magnum P.I.” in the popular CBS show of the 1980s.Now I can’t even find the re-runs.